Week in Review for the Week of 2/18/19

Australia announces parliament and major political parties have been hacked, Apple’s Project Marzipan will eventually let developers submit a single binary for iOS and Mac apps, and Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Fold and S10 models.

Headlines

In an announcement to the Australian Parliment, Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated that an investigation into a parliamentary hack showed that networks for the Liberal, Labor and National political parties were also effected. Mr. Morrison clarified that there is no evidence of interference for the upcoming national elections in May. The government believes these attacks come from a sophisticated state actor. As a result, electoral commissions have been briefed in all states and territories, and the Australian Cyber Security Centre will make technical experts available to any political party or electoral body.

Walmart's latest earnings report U.S. sales up 4.2 percent over the same time last year, and a 43 percent rise in e-commerce sales in the US, beating analysts' expectations. Walmart said the strong e-commerce growth was due to the expansion of its grocery pickup and delivery businesses, and broader offerings on Walmart.com. The company ended relationships with Uber, Lyft, and Deliv while adding new partners like Point Pickup, Skipcart, AxleHire and Roadie, while adding partners like Postmates and DoorDash. Walmart expects to offer pickup at 3,100 locations and delivery at 1,600 locations by the end of fiscal year 2020.

The EU Council has agreed to the EU Copyright Directive which includes articles designed to make websites liable for uploads in certain instances, and limits what snippets websites may display from news organizations without seeking a license. Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland were the only countries to object to the directive. The directive now goes to committee and then on to an EU parliament vote in March or early April.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports his sources say Apple's project Marzipan aims to let developers build an app once and run on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Starting later this year a new developers kit will let people port iPad apps to Mac. By 2020 iPhone will be added to the kit. By 2021 the kit can merge the three ports into one binary so they won't need to be submitted to each store separately. Apple will likely announce details at its developers conference which takes place June 3 through June 7.

Samsung announced the Galaxy Fold, a phone that unfolds into a tablet. It has a 4.6-inch front display and a 7.3-inch infinity flex tablet display when unfolded. It contains 512 GB of storage, can show 3 apps at once tiled on screen for multitasking and can switch between screens without pause. The Galaxy Fold arrives April 26 in LTE and 5G versions, starting at $1,980.

Samsung also announced new versions of the Galaxy S10 with an in-screen ultrasonic fingerprint reader that can work with wet fingers and three rear cameras. It also can wirelessly charge other devices. The $899 6.1-inch S10, the $1000 6.4-inch S10 Plus and the $749 5.8-inch S10 E are available for preorder, shipping March 8. A version with 5G will arrive later this year coming first to Verizon in the US.

YouTube says it has terminated more than 400 channels, disabled comments on tens of millions of videos and reported illegal content to authorities for violations of its policies. Nestle companies, AT&T, Hasbro, Epic Games and others have all paused advertisements on YouTube over concerns about appearing alongside videos shared by pedophiles. A source told Ars Technica that Disney has also paused YouTube advertising for the same reason.

Facebook is removing its Onavo VPN app from the Google Play store. The VPN service will continue to work for existing users but eventually be shut down. Facebook used data from the app's users to conduct market research but it has stopped that practice. Facebook has also stopped recruiting new users of the Facebook Research app for Android. The iOS versions of both apps were banned by Apple.

HTC announced the Vive Focus Plus which includes a pair of its updated motion controllers the company first announced as developer hardware back in October. The Vive Focus’s original single controller supported three degrees of freedom, and these new controllers support six, so they can be tracked as they move around as well as rotating on the spot. This puts HTC in competition with Oculus' Quest, a standalone headset with two controllers due this spring. The Vive Focus Plus is aimed primarily at business customers, and will be available in 25 countries including the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, and China, though no word on pricing yet.